I once saw a recording of a horse race. I don’t recall which race it was, but one of the horses involved was named “AARRRRRRR,” which was pretty hilarious to hear the poor announcer scream every time the situation called for it. Especially because the guy really committed to screaming the name every chance he got.

And when I first began working for The Courier, I did a story on a girl named Audrey Price, who was 14 at the time and broke a 49-year old speed run record on her horse “Ichi Jo,” which I thought was a fabulously weird name back then.

It got me thinking. Why are race horses’ names so strange and interesting?

As you can imagine, there are rules that govern thoroughbred horse racing and with so many horses and rules that prevent names that are even phonetically similar — it can become hard to come up with something unique.

Horse names can be up to 18 characters, including spaces and punctuation. All horse names must be approved by the Jockey Club.

Some rules include:

n No initials, such as I.O.U., or C.O.D.

n No names ending in filly, colt, stud or any other similar horse-related term.

n No names consisting entirely of numbers.

n No names that are suggestive or vulgar or in poor taste.

n Horses must have unique names.

When the Jockey Club receives name suggestions for a horse, they run it through a computer program that checks for similar-sounding names. If the suggested name sounds the same as an already existing horse, that’s no good. For example, if a horse named Easy Street raced for many years, a suggested name of Eazy Street would be no good.

At any given time, there are about 450,000 active names, which is why people get so creative during the naming process.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Really Fast Horse

• Blazing Buddha

• Ha Ha Ha

• Whykickamoocow

• AARRRRRRR

• Passing Wind

There are some others I won’t list here. Despite the rules stating that offensive names were not allowed, a few slipped past them. You can look them up for yourself if you feel so inclined — what am I, Google?